page_title: Buildings and architecture of Bath
section_title: Celtic, Roman and Saxon
hierarchical_section_title: Buildings and architecture of Bath / Celtic, Roman and Saxon
caption_attribution_description: English: The Roman Baths (Thermae) of Bath Spa, England. This is a 6 segment panorama taken by myself with a Canon 5D and 24-105mm f/4L IS lens. Français&#160;: Les thermes romaines de la ville de Bath, en Angleterre. Cette image est un panorama obtenu en assemblant six clichés pris avec un appareil Canon 5D équipé d'un objectif 24-105mm f/4L IS.
context_page_description: The buildings and architecture of Bath, a city in Somerset in the south west of England, reveal significant examples of the architecture of England, from the Roman Baths, to the present day. The city became a World Heritage Site in 1987, largely because of its architectural history and the way in which the city landscape draws together public and private buildings and spaces. The many examples of Palladian architecture are purposefully integrated with the urban spaces to provide "picturesque aestheticism". It is the only entire city in Britain to achieve World Heritage status, and is a popular tourist destination.
  Important buildings include the Roman Baths; neoclassical architect Robert Adam's Pulteney Bridge, based on an unused design for the Rialto Bridge in Venice; and Bath Abbey in the city centre, founded in 1499 on the site of an 8th-century church.
context_section_description: Buildings from Bath's pre-Norman period either no longer exist, or their remains are below street level. Archaeological sites in the central area of the city have supplied some details about how they may have looked, while the lower areas of the Roman Baths reveal significant remains from the Roman period.
  The Baths were built around hot springs, the only ones naturally occurring in the United Kingdom. Archaeological evidence suggests that the main spring in its natural state was treated as a shrine by the Celts. During the early Roman occupation of Britain, in the 60s or 70s AD, engineers drove oak piles into the mud to provide a stable foundation and surrounded the spring with an irregular stone chamber lined with lead. These still survive. At this early stage the spring was an open pool in the corner of the temple precinct. It fed a bathing complex on its south side within a barrel-vaulted building. The complex was gradually built up over the next 300 years. All the stonework above the level of the baths is from more recent periods including the 12th century, when John of Tours built a curative bath over the King's Spring reservoir, and the 16th century, when the city corporation built a new bath (Queen's Bath) to the south of the spring. The spring is now housed in 18th-century buildings designed by architects John Wood, the Elder and John Wood, the Younger; visitor access is via an 1897 concert hall by J M Brydon, which is an eastward continuation of the Grand Pump Room with a glass-domed centre and single-storey radiused corner.
  Beside the baths, a temple, in classical style with four large, fluted Corinthian columns and dedicated to Minerva The temple remained in use for worship until around the 4th century, but the site is now occupied by the Grand Pump Room.
  The city was given defensive walls, probably in the 3rd century, but they disappeared during subsequent redevelopments. The line of then formed the basis of the medieval walls enclosing 23 acres (9.3 ha), some which survived until the 18th century. The Anglo-Saxons called the town Baðum, Baðan or Baðon, meaning "at the baths," the source of the present name. In 675, Osric, King of the Hwicce, set up a monastic house at Bath, probably using the walled area as its precinct. The Anglo-Saxon poem known as The Ruin may describe the appearance of the Roman site about this time. King Offa of Mercia gained control of this monastery in 781 and rebuilt the church, which was dedicated to St. Peter. By the 9th century the old Roman street pattern had been lost, and Bath had become a royal possession; King Alfred laid out the town afresh, leaving its south-eastern quadrant as the abbey precinct.
caption: The Great Bath at the Roman Baths. The entire structure above the level of the pillar bases is a later construction.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "3033", "Image ImageLength": "2506", "Image BitsPerSample": "[16, 16, 16, 16]", "Image Compression": "PackBits", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "4", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:04:25 16:33:09", "Image ExifOffset": "256", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "394", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8207", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2638", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2296"}